


Softness

by selkiegirl



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Day Two: Friends and Family, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, POV Outsider, Stream of Consciousness, Yuuri Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 11:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11599494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selkiegirl/pseuds/selkiegirl
Summary: Mila only really, truly, understands Katsuki Yuuri after watching him skate.





	Softness

**Author's Note:**

> _*whispering into a microphone* _i have a lot of love for Yuuri and Viktor and Mila, ok?__  
>   
>  Thank so much for reading!  
> 

The first time Mila meets Yuuri in person, she is mildly unimpressed.

It's not that Yuuri is in some way lacking or isn’t enough, it's just that she had seen the videos of his world-record breaking programs, a breathtaking mixture of confidence and the unveiling of a story that never grew old, regardless of how many times she had watched and rewatched them. She had seen him dance at 2016 GPF banquet like there was nothing holding him back in the world.

And, from all this,  Mila had almost created an entire personality for him without meeting him.

But, when she met him at dinner with the rest of the Russian skating team for his first welcome to Russia, Viktor’s protective arm around his shoulders, Yuuri had hidden his hands in the sleeves of his overlarge sweater.  He spoke in stumbling Russian, with a lilting Japanese accent on his words, his blushing face framed by curling midnight hair and his wide brown eyes magnified by large glasses, his shyness shielding him like an aura.

He was objectively beautiful, Mila could freely admit, with his dark deerlike eyes, soft hair, and an even softer smile.

He had the presence of secrets, Mila had supposed, and a sense of stability and trustworthiness.  She mused that if she were to tell Yuuri things, he would take her secrets within himself forever, holding them close to his heart for as long as she would want them to stay hidden from the world.

But there was a duality with that,  because she had also wanted to protect him, and maybe that had been the first thing, because how could that be the same person who could slam his face into the boards of a rink during a competition, and get up laughing, with blood trailing down his face? 

It wasn’t exactly a bad feeling, meeting Yuuri, and he wasn’t in anyway lesser because of not being what she had expected or hoped him to be, but she couldn't help but tease him over dinner to hide the sinking feeling in her stomach.  It wasn’t quite disappointment, because how could one be disappointed when what they knew, but hoped otherwise, was false, but the feeling was akin to it, similar in it the way it lodged itself in the pit of her throat.

It’s her own fault, Mila knows, with her stupidly unrealistic expectations based on the mirage of smoke in a mirror, but a smaller part of her still wanted to hold those expectations against the shy skater with his flashing silver blades and quiet looks of wonderment.

 

* * *

 

Practice was not much better.

Mila wasn’t sure what she how she had imaged Yuuri to practice; it was unreasonable to think he would constantly skate like he did in competitions, but she had thought it would be similar to Viktor and Yuri in some ways, with the easy mastery and flowing brilliance.

Instead, the dark haired man carried a dedication, getting up after falling and falling from unsuccessful jumps to try again and again, never seeming to tire, never seeming to give up, portraying a deep love of the sport itself.

There's was a deep quietness that Yuuri held close to himself, wrapped up within layers and layers of hidden complexities, and as Mila watched him finally skate the compulsory figure eights that looked like art, her pink gloved hands pressed to her mouth.  Something unfolded within her.

She had created the image of him based on the memories of the banquet and of videos of him practicig, because she had thought that they would be able to be friends when he arrived. But as she glided across the ice, she realised that she could still have this even if he wasn’t what she had expected.

It wasn’t quite respect yet, but it was getting there.  
  


* * *

 

The first time Mila oversaw Yuuri and Viktor together, afterwards, it was an accident.

She had forgotten something small and insignificant at the rink that she needed that night when she had left, a little over an hour before. She had doubled back to retrieve it in the dark, bleeding afternoon, retracting the well known steps from earlier that day.

The doors to the rink had been locked, but she had stolen a spare key from the board in Yakov’s office years ago without him noticing, and Mila hadn’t thought about why it had been locked as she fumbled with the frosty key, her hands bitten with the cold in her haste to get someplace warmer.

Inside, with her fingers pressed against her mouth and her breath warm and damp against them, she heard music floating down the long hallway, growing clearer with each passing step.  It was something lovely and gentle, and she realized with surprise that someone was still there.  When she rounded the corner, her quietly padding steps unheard, obstructed by the music, she wasn’t really that surprised to see Viktor and Yuuri.  Some part of the image had just fit, the fading afternoon light framing the ice in gold, the setting perfect for their intertwining stories, caught like honey in their own delicate dance of lovers, oblivious to all but themselves.

Mila had heard the rumors, of course, prevalent despite the denial in which the public skating world ignored them, outlining all the reasons why they were _not_ plausible. She had seen the kiss at the Cup of China, but this was _Russia,_ and it was just talk.  She hadn’t wanted to believe it until she asked Viktor himself.

But she wasn’t Yuri with his defiance that hinted at that he knew, nor Yakov with his harsh critique and even harsher displays of care. And she certainly wasn’t Georgie too swallowed up in his own grief and consumed in his own plight to be completely unable to see.

So, she had noticed things: the softest of looks, the way Viktor’s fingers would brush against Yuuri’s and the way his hand would linger on the dark haired skater’s back for longer than necessary, or the way that Yuuri would look at Viktor while he was in the rink, with a small gentle smile that could only mean one thing. The way that they had linked hands when they left in the evenings, leaning on each others’ shoulders after practice, and the countless other gestures that all meant the same.

But now, watching Yuuri fly across the ice in a way that she had never seen him do in public practice, it was undeniable.  Viktor was there, but he wasn’t skating; instead, he watched Yuuri.

He was leaning against the wall of the rink, his gloves folded on the edge, leaning forward to clip the skate guards onto his golden blades.  Behind them, the music sung in English by a woman with a beautiful, melancholy voice that she didn’t recognize.

And when Mila looked at Yuuri, truly seeing him skate, without the limit imposed in a public practice, she began to understand for the first time why the bright-eyed, smiling Thai boy sung Yuuri’s praises in interviews when the reporters asked about skaters that inspired him, asked why he posted so often on social media about his admiration for his close friends.

She began to comprehend why Yuri looked up to the Japanese skater, as much as he pretended he didn’t, hiding his true feelings with biting insults, despite the faint tell-tale blush of a teenage crush painted onto his fair cheeks.

And maybe, just maybe, she understood for the first time, why Viktor had flown over four thousand miles across the world, hours after an internet video that meant nothing, at least to her, went viral, just to see him dance again.

It was almost as if Yuuri had wings.

It was loose, sloppy in some areas, his spins and jumps flowing without a cohesive unity that was necessary for official programs.  His moves were held in place only by the progression of the music, but in the place of perfection was something worth infinitely more: the rawness of a story, so tender and filled with emotions that it could only be interpreted as a single declaration of love.

It’s then, Mila thinks, watching  them move, with Yuuri swirling on the ice and Viktor watching him with such indescribale fondness, in their half forged harmony, and turning to go, her forgotten object still lost, that she thinks to herself: _Viktor really loves that boy._  
  


* * *

 

The second time Mila sees them alone, it was still accidental.

She had fallen asleep in one of the small side rooms of the large rink, barely an hour after she had finished practice, her face pressed against the crisp pages of the dense textbooks that she had been frantically trying to study for the exam tomorrow.

Mila had been awoken by some internal clock.  She was disoriented and woozy, her body cold and stiff from the ever present and subtle draft from the ice. Wobbling as she stood, she had crammed her books, stray papers and notebooks roughly back into her thread worn school pack and swung it over her shoulder, grasping her skating bag with the other hand, dreading the long night of studying still ahead of her with complete thoughtlessness for her surroundings. 

The light to the hallway was still on as she stepped out, and, looking back, maybe that should have been her first clue.  However, it was the voices that filtered down the hallway to where she stood that finally caused her to pause.

Mila heard Viktor first, his deep voice and thick with accent and familiar with age.  Yuuri’s was intertwined, his lyrical crisp English that sounded like a song fitting into the empty spaces of quiet that Viktor left after his laughs and jokes, and once more, she wasn’t surprised.  They were inseparable.

She has guessed this to some extent, from images of them at competitions, with Yuuri’s anxiety stark and red on his face and Viktor’s strong arms around his shoulders steadying him, from Instagram posts from the collective people of Yuuri’s hometown in Japan, tagging both of them and garnering thousands of likes.  But there was something different about seeing them every day, something more profound, their bodies in constant orbit of the other, both succumbing to the gravity of the other.

Mila couldn't hear what they were saying and she was grateful, some intrinsic part warning her that this wasn’t for her to overhear.  It was intimate and private and belonged only to them.  She had ducked back into the darkened side room just in time; the voices grew louder, and the silhouettes of them had finally become Viktor and Yuuri, backlit with the twilight and holding hands.

“I’ll race you.” Viktor says, mirth light in his voice.

“In _socks_?”

“Yeah. To the end of the hallway.”

Yuuri laughed then.  He laughed as he spoke and as he skated, personally and delicately.

“Alright.”

They started off then, both of their stocking feet making a soft padding on the cold cement floor of the hallway, letting go of their clasped fingers for the fleeting second before they started to slide, frantically trying to keep their balance as they slipped down the cold floor.

Yuuri beat Viktor to the doorway that ended the hall.  They were giggling like children, and as Mila watched, Viktor moved towards Yuuri, as if drawn by some unseen force that could only be felt by them, entangled in their love song.

As Viktor kissed Yuuri, his arms circling low around the Japanese skater’s back, Yuuri went on his toes, looping up his arms up so they encircled Victor neck, drawing them even closer together to kiss him back.

 _Viktor really loves that boy_ , Mila thought, and then, the realization dawning on her like the spring blossoms that came so hesitantly to St. Petersburg, _t_ _hat boy really loves Viktor back_.

How lucky did one have to be to have a love like that?

How lucky do two people have to be to be fall in love with each other at the same time, to be so perfectly aligned in their understanding, their intimacy, and tenderness?

Viktor had called Yuuri his soulmate at the Grand Pixis Final in Barcelona, the ring glinting golden on his finger, and Mila could not disagree, for what other word was there to fit them?

Mila thought of her own conflicting feelings for the Italian skater with long black hair that flowed like wind when she walked, and her growing admiration for the serious faced Kazakh skater. The budding jealousy for what Viktor and Yuuri shared had been subtle, growing the past couple weeks, but as Mila witnessed the look between Yuuri and Viktor, she could only have a fierce, fierce happiness for them.

Mila understood then, why there was something back in Victor that she hadn't seen for years, so small and flickering that she hadn’t noticed when it had dimmed over the days, and months, and years, before it had finally vanished sometime last season, and in its had place blossomed the dull grieving, the longing of the Stammi Vicino program.

Critics had said that the program would be more believable if Viktor was younger, more naive, but Mila could only think of the hours upon hours where she had watched the silver haired skater, his practice bleeding into the undefinable hours of the early mornings.  He would be back in the morning, his tell-tale hair matted and once bright bright eyes faded, and she could only wonder how they could not see it, how they felt his grief not believable _._

She thought about how he had cut his hair when he was twenty-one, and how Yakov and her had found him, curled up around a vodka bottle with bleeding feet and a bruised heart.

Loneliness was cruel on him, the grip it held so fundamentally wrong and heartbreaking. 

But now, watching them be so in love at the end of the hallway, the dying day illuminating their backs as the sun turned them into statues of gold, Mila understood that Viktor had finally gained that small, unnameable, and infinitely precious feeling back.  For so long she had passed it off as the return of his inspiration as he had bounced back to the rink, grinning giddily and carrying an enthusiasm that she hadn’t seen for _years_. She had been grateful, but hadn’t thought much about it.  It was no secret that Yuuri was Viktor’s muse; he stated so in every interview, even when he wasn’t asked.

But it was more than that.  She snuck out when they weren't looking, her shame at seeing something so personal and honest still stamped into her mind.  She curled around her nightly cup of tea, her study books spread out before her.  Her mind was not on her test the next day.  Viktor was happy again.  It was beautiful on him.

 

* * *

 

Mila goes over to Viktor’s apartment later in the season, after the frantic rush of the placements revelations for the qualifying competitions had ceased and their new programs no longer seemed so unfamiliar.

She had been there countless times before, was able to articulate the exact placement of his kitchen, the exact steps Viktor had to walk down before he reached his door. She had slept on Viktor’s dark blue couch numerous times, both of them wearing exhaustion like a second skin, and she had watched Viktor crack and fold upon himself in tears that she would never tell anyone about. She had held back his silvery hair as he retched in the toilet, the empty bottles still spinning on the marble bathroom floor beside him.  She could tell you the exact taste and smell of Viktor’s loneliness, and it was the very same scent as his apartment.

In some ways, Mila was afraid to go back there.  She had been nervous when Viktor had announced that he was moving back to St. Peterburg, back into the apartment meant for two but had only ever held one, even if he said it with his ridiculously heart-shaped smile.  She hadn’t wanted him to lose his fragile happiness by returning to what had stolen it in the first place.

But her perspective had changed as she had watch Viktor kiss Yuuri at the rink, their bodies fitting perfectly together like mirror images, echoing the story of countless other kisses before it and countless that would occur afterword.  Mila had allowed herself to hope that maybe, just maybe, something would be different.

It was a fair day outside, a gentle golden sunlight streaming down, and the bright greens of leaf buds unfurling on bare branches.  It was one of the rare days that Yakov had declared to be a rest day. He hadn’t taken any excuses, threatening murderous warm-ups of line drills the next day if anyone showed up at the rink, so they had all dispersed, their confusion at what to do besides skate showing in each step and every dejected bag of gear hanging on their shoulders.

But now, outside, with the cars rushing past and her steps echoing on the street, ears pink from the lingering chill, Mila could only feel contentedness.

She hadn’t told Viktor she was coming over, the idea still half formed as she had started walking.  She was feeling lighter than she had in weeks, even as she avoided the slushy piles of melting snow.  Mila found it hard to discern when Viktor had become the big brother figure that he was to her, or when he had become someone who she could talk to, their friendship blooming despite their age difference.  She was lucky, to have someone like that, who was always there and always willing to listen, despite his own crushing emotions.

Mila came to a sudden stop, having entered the apartment building, climbed the two sets of carpeted stairs, and pressed a cold finger to the door buzzer without ever realizing she’d done so.  Viktor comes to the door looking breathless moments after Mila rang the bell, his hair mussed and a bright smile that grows when he sees her.

“Mila!” He exclaims with all of his usual excitement, going on happily about how he didn’t know she was coming over.  She smiles, and nods, and all she can think about is how much she missed this, even in the bleakest years, and how overwhelmingly pleased she is to be able to see him smile again.

He ushers her inside, and when they go up the stairs to step inside his previously excruciatingly cold home, Mila can only let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

It was different

The changes were small but powerful.  The curtains were open and on every windowsill were potted plants, their leaves reminiscent of the buds just starting to blossom into existence outside.

There was an unfamiliar sleek silver laptop on the table, its screen long since gone dark.  Its back was adorned with stickers, most that Mila doesn’t recognize, but the rainbow heart on the top left corner was unmistakable. On the couch was a paperback, it’s cover light blue and a title on its face in a language she couldn't read with its spine was permanently bent from having been read so many times.  And, on the back of a chair, the distinctive black and blue Team Japan jacket was haphazardly tossed, a half empty tea mug on the table next to it.

The apartment looked lived in now, like a home.  It was if the apartment was a completely separate place than the one that Viktor had inhabited alone for all those years, and Mila knew without a doubt which one she liked better.

Yuuri steps out of the kitchen, cupping  both hands around a new steaming mug of tea. “Who was it?” He asks Viktor, before spotting her, and grinning slightly. “Hey Mila.”

It was as if it was natural that she was over there, neither Viktor nor Yuuri questioning her visit, instead only offering her lunch, and as she watched Yuuri and Viktor step around each other in the kitchen, bumping their hips together accidentally, that she realized that this was a different Yuuri than that one that she had met over dinner, and from the one that she had seen at practice.

This was a Yuuri who was comfortable with Viktor, and it warmed her heart that she was included in that, both of them folding her into the rush of their lives without question. 

And maybe, as Yuuri was chatting to both of them as he chopped vegetables, with Viktor stirring a pot that burbled happily on the stove, that maybe Yuuri could both be not what she had expected but still what she had hoped for if she gave him a chance.   

 

* * *

 

It was sometime later, one obscure and vague day without any indication of significance, when Mila really, truly saw Yuuri for the first time.

It had been after practice, as the warm afternoon light that shone through the windows of the rink beckoned people home, people slowly started filtering off the ice, snagging water bottles and skate bags before leaving.

Even Viktor was seemingly done, leaning against the half wall to the rink, a mirror image of the other time she had seen them, and his purple and blue skate guards already clipped over his golden blades.  Even as people were leaving, Yuuri remained on the ice standing opposite to Viktor.  When he spoke, the words were lost in the empty echo of the room.  Lost to all but them.  Viktor threw back his head, his laughter heard even from the distant side of the rink.

They agreed on something, Viktor’s silver hair bobbing excitedly as he nodded, and Yuuri skated to the center, the quiet cutting of his blades on the ice reverberating in the frosty air.

Viktor’s and Yuuri’s eyes meet once more, and even from the side of the rink, Mila can see Yuuri exhale.

The Japanese man lifted his arms to his heart, and began to skate.

She could only distantly wonder how he had strength left after a full day, but it was like a switch was hit. It was like he started to fly. He soared into the dance, his arms uplifted to the sky and his feet steady as he swirled in place.

It was eerie without music, the story unraveling outwards, and it was if Yuuri had grown wings, each step delicate but purposeful.  He barely touched down before leaping, flying across the frozen surface in a pattern that only he understood.

He was breathtaking.

Mila mused if this was why skaters fell in love with other skaters.

She had talked to Yuuri  several times since she had seem them at their apartment, going out in the evening after practice around St. petersburg, sometimes with Viktor or Yuri and sometimes by themselves. They had gotten coffee at nearby cafes, had gone to her favorite gardens that had just started to open for the season, had spend time at Viktor and his apartment for dinner while Yuuri had helped her with her calculus homework. All the while she was learning about him, and understanding how infinitely complex he could be.  Their relationship had started to grow.

Mila had been unsure when she met him.  His fundamental gentleness, his quiet nature, seemed to directly conflict with how he created entire worlds when he skated in front of audiences of thousands, captivating the attention of each for long after he stepped out of the rink.

But this was something else.  This was the skater who still had that softness, had never lost that piece of him, but was still the one who set world records, mesmerized entire nations, and inspired thousands simply by the grace by which he moved.

And maybe for the first time, Mila understood how the person who hid his hands in sweater sleeves could be the same person who could drunkenly ask his idol to dance. 

Because to know Yuuri was to want to protect him, but to really _really_ know him was to know that Yuuri was made of steel and concrete, but that he could also bleed and bruise.  Despite it all, he would still get up and keep going.

The image of of the Yuuri she had never met, created entirely on her own expectations, could still fit with the real Yuuri, the quiet but stunningly powerful and awe inspiring.

Because, at heart, Yuuri was a contradiction, an allegory, an oxymoron.

His many layers of complexities didn't make him anything less, but instead, somehow, made him stronger, and more complete. Even the parts of him that people couldn't always see, the pieces that people dismissed as conflicting or opposing or contrasting, were still able to fit together to create the beautiful, _beautiful_ person who was dancing in the middle of the rink like it was all he was born to do.

And for the first time, it made sense why Viktor said Yuuri never stopped surprising him, why he was a mystery, why he thought Yuuri was so complicated and intricate; and why Viktor was so painfully, honestly and truly in love with him.

When Mila had first seen Yuuri skate to an unfamiliar English song, alone but for Viktor all those weeks ago, she had been unable to look away, her eyes fixated on the form that seemed to never stop moving. But now, the audience’s quiet awe pervaded only by the cut of his blades, Mila turned to look at Viktor, still leaning against the wall of the rink.  He was blushing, the pink barely noticeable on his pale face.  His hand was partly covering his mouth, but he looked the happiest that she had ever seen him.

He looked so completely in love just then, so enraptured by his fiancé's movements.

This was not the Viktor who she had known and watched from afar in awe as he skated pirouettes that were worth gold. And this was not the Viktor whose depression had left cutting shards of a once whole person, leaving him without happiness or inspiration for what he had once loved more than life.  Where had she been, to not notice when the once almost unbearably bright man who had slowly been fading into grayscale suddenly burst back into a bloom of colour and emotions?  Where had she been to not see his giddy, infectious happiness that had only returned with Yuuri?

Now, the Viktor who stood at the side of the rink now was a different man altogether, one that she had never seen before.  He was so earnestly _human,_ watching his lover paint stories on the ice, and Mila couldn’t look away.  Because for people Viktor and Yuuri, people whose first language wasn’t Russian or Japanese but was skating, people who lived and loved and breathed their entire lives onto the ice, Yuuri’s swirling dance was, and could only be, a love letter.  Each spin that sent his ebony hair twirling around his ears, each jump and each glide _meant_ something.  It represented a story of their unspoken whispers in the pale hours of the mornings, of empty tea mugs in a shared apartment, of stolen kisses and lasting hugs.

There was something that held Viktor and Yuuri together tighter than any promise, and Mila knew without any doubt that they would fight the rising sun each morning and all the tides in the sea if it only meant that they would stay together.  On the days when Viktor wore sadness like a suit of a armor, each step laced with uncertainty, Yuuri would take him in his arms, placing butterfly soft kisses on Viktor's neck, each one saying, _“I’m here, I’m here.”_ And on the days when Yuuri forgot how to breathe, each small mouthful of air a victory, Viktor would be there for him, running his hands soothingly along his back, whispering, ‘ _I'm here with you._ ’

Because for them, that was what it meant, to give all you had and more, and get it back in twice fold, and still hold onto yourself.  Because for Viktor and Yuuri, that was what it meant to love someone.

Mila knew that when she would fall in love in the years to come, wholly and completely, that in the sleepless nights when she would question the worth of things, she would think of how Viktor had looked at Yuuri as he had flown across the ice, and wonder if she could ever love someone like that.  If she, herself, would ever be lucky enough to find someone who would look at her like that in return.

She would visit their apartment in the future, years after, where a new puppy nipped at their heels, where half full mugs were scattered across the apartment, and watch Viktor look at Yuuri like he hung the stars in the sky, with his stupidly appropriate heart shape grin, and loop his long fingers in one of Yuuri’s belt loop, pulling him close to kiss him tenderly.  She would watch Yuuri look at him back, with his achingly soft smile, as he brushed his hands against his lover’s silvery hair and interlaced their fingers in a way that spoke of the hundreds of time before it.

Because Mila knew, that even after the years and the decades, after all the good and the bad, through the hardships and laugher, that they would still be together, still reach out and touch each other at every chance, still skate together at in the quiet moments, and still be wonderfully, fiercely in love.

Because people like Viktor and Yuuri were built to last.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed the story!  
>   
> Comments and Kudos are very much appreciated!  
>   
> Some random tidbits about the story:  
>   
> \- I imagined the song that Yuuri is skating too in the first part with Victor either to be [Dog Days Are Over by Florence + The Machine ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny4deVFsYuo) or [Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) by Florence + The Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny4deVFsYuo)  
> \- The pose of Viktor and Yuuri kissing the second time Mila sees them was based off of this [gorgous art](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com/post/161290390580/56205607-mornings-in-st-petersburg)  
> -It was also partly inspired off of this [lovely lovely art](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com/post/161784111255/dorodraws-when-the-feels-hit-you-and-you-gotta)  
> -Also look at this [breathtaking art?? ](http://nakadima.tumblr.com/post/160123030142)  
> -And the scene with the setting sun was heavily inspired by [this masterpiece](http://lordizxy.tumblr.com/post/159155751860/seeing-his-love-backlit-by-the-evening-sun-there)  
> -The book that Yuuri was reading was [_Howl's Moving Castle ___](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16204601-howl-s-moving-castle) _ ___  
>   
> You can also come visit at me on my[tumblr](http://selkiegirls.tumblr.com/) and we can talk about Yuri on Ice and lots of other things!  
>   
>  _EDIT: The links were not working before but should be working fine now!_


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